I know that I'm among this group. I have had personality tests at several points in my life and they're fairly consistent about this. It helps with playing music. But I think it contributed to my being abused a lot as a boy.

I had seen that too and thought it looked very similar to the list of symptoms of PTSD and CSA.

It makes me wonder how much of my current behaviors/personality are because I'm highly sensitive or because of what happened to me. It makes me angry that I will never know how I would have turned out if I had not been traumatized.

It makes me wonder (ok, more than wonder, it confuses the hell out of me) how much of being a highly sensitive person I should embrace as the me I am today, and how much I should work to change some of these things to become the me I wish I were.

For example, "they're probably used to hearing, "Don't take things so personally" and "Why are you so sensitive?" Should I accept that this is me, or should I work to take things less personally?

Yes I think that what happens to us affects us greatly. Abuse is powerful in its affects on us. Accordingly when we have experienced abuse, it makes it much more difficult to figure out who we really are.

However, sensitivity is a thing which is outside of abuse. It's not that sensitivity in people is better or worse than insensitivity. Both are useful in different situations. For instance, I would suppose that sensitivity is not of advantage if we're talking about football players. However, if we're talking about musicians or other artists, sensitivity is highly desirable.

I first started to discover the meaning of sensitivity when I learned about things like meters or microscopes and such. If you are trying to measure the current to be fed to a tiny electronic circuit, you need a meter which is highly sensitive. However, if you are going to measure the current in a high voltage transmission line you would need a meter which is not very sensitive.

I think abuse can cause us to be more sensitive to people. We can start to understand how and why other people hurt. Hence we can begin to help others with their hurts.

Dear Puffer and Landscape.Great posts. Those 16 on that list are me to a tee. But i still dont know if my sensitive nature "got" me abused or what. I was always a shy kid before that. Something to work through with my therapist i guess. Thanks for sharing thoughts here it helps me alot. Gypsy123P.S. Maybe if i wasnt so sensitive and a bit tougher my perp wouldnt have had the chance to HELP me. Aaaah who knows. Sposed to stop blaming myself so scratch that. Justy ramblin now.

Thanks from me also for posting the link. I read the article and the 16 indicators. And clicked on the self-test for sensitivity. I scored only 22… the other 5 could have been marked but I gave myself the benefit of the doubt. Soooo… I am a sensitive, ridiculed, made-fun-of, not manly enough North American male who "feels" too much. The article was great and insightful.

Maybe if everyone read the article who uses MS, and realizes that as many as 1 in 5 are considered highly sensitive, a more kinder tone would always be utilized in our threads (as most of them are already) and the choice of words would reflect our love and constant concern for others' well-being.

Since my own abuse was at such a young age and lasted so long, I sometimes wonder if it was what made me so intuitive and sensitive. But then most of the time, I believe God just made me with a different spirit than most, with gifts that permit me to be more observant, more intuitive, even more gentle. I don't fight it anymore and am no longer embarrassed when someone calls me out. I just say its the way God made me.

Your sensitivity is obvious by your desire to share such an important aspect of personal characteristics to help others better accept themselves and heal with more understanding in what makes us what we are. You, sir, are a pretty cool guy.

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